GW broke through the two-year plateau in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, moving up two slots to take the No. 51 spot, according to the annual college rankings released Tuesday.

GW shares the 51st slot with Tulane University in New Orleans.

The University has been hovering near the top 50 for a few years now, ranking 53rd two years in a row. After last year’s rankings were released, members of the University administration sought to minimize the report.

“The U.S. News rankings are taken as one among a number of measures as to how we are doing in improving GW academically and otherwise,” former Vice President for Academic Affairs Donald Lehman wrote in an e-mail last year.

Robert Chernak, senior vice president for Student and Academic Support Services, told The Hatchet last year that there had not been any correlation between GW’s ranking and the number of students applying for admission, adding that both the size and quality of the freshman class had increased.

U.S. News and World Report bases its rankings on a variety of criteria, including selectivity, class size, student-faculty ratio, freshman retention, alumni giving rate, and “peer assessments” from presidents, provosts, and admissions deans from other universities.

This year, rankings also factored in high school counselors’ opinions and weighted graduation rates more heavily.